“…I love [OHM] and I hope I never have to use anything else again!”

Libby Watts, Professor of Mathematics, Tidewater Community College

Faculty Roundtable Sessions bring together faculty who are already using Lumen-supported OER courses with those who are exploring this path. On Monday, October 17th, 2017, we had the opportunity to speak with Matthew and Libby Watts of Tidewater Community College, both Professors of Math and champions of the OER movement for Math courses. You may:

  • View a video recording of the Faculty Roundtable
  • Download presentation slides
  • Read key takeaways from our discussion
  • Request more information about this OER course

 

View Roundtable Recording

Download Slides

Use this Slideshare link to download Roundtable slides.

Highlights and Key Takeaways

See the Q&A below for key takeaways from Matthew and Libby’s roundtable conversation.

Q: What issues were you looking to address when deciding to adopt OER?

Beyond increasing access and affordability to high-quality course materials for students, there is a need to empower faculty with the freedom to customize their courses to best fit the student learning process.

Q: What are some of your favorite tools in OHM?

Lumen-supported OHM courseware allows faculty flexibility of design and the ability to integrate course content into a single LMS platform. Faculty can organize, customize, and delete modules where appropriate, add as many assignments as they would like, and ensure that there is minimal confusion between what students see on homework versus what they see on quizzes and exams.  Furthermore, its user-friendly and easy to create and edit questions within the platform.

Q: How’s it going, and how have students responded to the courseware?

Overwhelmingly, students say that they enjoy the platform and over 90% would recommend it to other students due to ease of navigation and low cost.

Q: How does it compare to what you were using previously?

Using a large publisher’s LMS in the past provided students access to help and grading papers became automated, but this alternative was expensive and faculty still needed to use a separate LMS platform to upload certain course materials, such as syllabi.

Q: What advice do you have for faculty who are considering adopting Lumen-supported courses such as OHM?

Start as soon as possible. If you’re not sure where or how to begin, start with one course and see what you think.